MIT engineering student receives technology award

Monday, 30 July

MIT engineering student receives national technology award

An MIT Bachelor of Engineering student, Matthew Richardson, has received national recognition for his work on NavBot – a robotic navigation system. The Royal Society of New Zealand presented Matthew with a Gold Crest Award in acknowledgment of his innovation and technological creativity.

“I have always been interested in technology. Studying at MIT has meant I have been able to focus this interest and broaden my understanding of engineering,” says Matthew.

The idea for the Navbot system came as flow-on result of a project he undertook in sixth form – a remote control lawnmower.

“I had been thinking on ways to improve it and thought about the possibility of making it fully automated, using GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to navigate the lawnmower around the garden. However the accuracy of GPS was not suited to the task and so I considered the idea of developing a scaled-down navigation system similar to GPS for use in a small environment.”

Developing on this thought process, Matthew developed the NavBot prototype, a robot which uses an LPS (Local Positioning System) to accurately navigate within a small environment, such as a room.

The NavBot LPS system uses similar concepts to GPS. Fixed beacons placed within the room are similar in function to GPS satellites. “The robot ‘talks’ to each beacon allowing it to calculate its distance to each one, after which it can calculate its position accurate to approximately two to three centimetres.”

But Matthew isn’t stopping there. “I have lots of fresh ideas for new projects bouncing around all the time, but the challenge is to find the time to follow through on them all!”

Matthew was recognised for his achievement by Sir Ron Carter, technology and science advisors, teachers and representatives from the Royal Society of New Zealand and ETITO. He has also been an award winner at the Bright Sparks HiTech Competition for two years running – winning a Best of Category award for the remote controlled lawnmower and the overall Supreme Award the following year with his Navbot project. He has also taken on a leadership role within the Bright Sparks programme, becoming a mentor on the Bright Sparks’ online forum and helping other young electronics enthusiasts with their projects.

ENDS